My fight for three families betrayed by their banks

Severely ill and dying customers are being left at the mercy of fraudsters – and banks are refusing to pay for their neglect ‘I LOST £829K TO A SCAM AFTER PARKINSON’S MEDICATION ALTERED MY PERSONALITY’

No one deserves to lose all their money to scammers, least of all the elderly and vulnerable. Yet Britain’s biggest banks are shamefully neglecting their sickest and most desperate customers after they have been robbed of their life savings. It is happening on a terrifying scale.

This week alone I’ve helped a woman with Parkinson’s, the family of a man who suffered from cancer and a severely depressed woman retrieve their life savings when no one else would. All three were left penniless by fraudsters and then abandoned. This column has forced the banks to repay £1.4m.

That it took this newspaper for these refunds to be made is criminal. Banks are supposed to treat vulnerable customers with greater care and be more lenient over refunds. This is because they are more likely to fall for scams and have less resilience to deal with the fallout. But banks seem to have no idea who is vulnerable and who isn’t.

According to the Financial Conduct Authority some 27.7 million adults have characteristics of vulnerability, such as poor health, low financial resilience or recent negative life events. That’s nearly half of us.

What’s clear from the shameful failings recounted on these pages is that banks cannot be trusted to identify and fairly treat vulnerable customers who fall victim to scams. These banks can be left to their own devices no more. The Government must force them to refund all fraud victims, regardless of vulnerability. A newspaper can’t step in every time someone loses their life savings.

QI am a single 69-year-old woman with advanced Parkinson’s disease, which I have had for 11 years. Five years ago, in 2017, I fell victim to a financial crime, which caused my life to unravel before my eyes. It felt like there was nothing I could do about it. I have been searching for someone who can help me, but to no avail. I desperately hope you could be that person.

When I was younger I never imagined I would end up in this position. In my prime I enjoyed a successful career in public relations and owned a beautiful family home with my husband, which we sold for £2m in 2016. Half of the sale price, £1m, was transferred into our respective bank accounts. My husband and I were still together, but relations between us had soured. At the time I was on a high dose of medicine called ropinirole for my Parkinson’s, which made me feel quite strange.

In December 2016 I gave a professional-looking investment company £250 to invest in stocks and shares. This was completely out of character for me, as I had never invested in the stock market before.

I was told my investment had doubled to £500, and then I started making serious money, or so I thought. It all got out of hand and between January and June 2017 I invested a total of £829,000. I was told this had grown to £2.7m. This would buy me an annuity of £20,000 a month for the rest of my life, I was told, which I had planned to use eventually to fund a luxury care home for myself.

Then one day my “broker” called to say that all my money had gone. That was the last I heard from him. I felt utterly crushed as I realised I had been conned out of nearly all my money. I was ready to take my own life for several weeks after that phone call. I couldn’t believe what I had done.

I went to the doctor and she reduced my dose of ropinirole. It wasn’t long before I felt more like “me” again. A lump formed in my throat when my children said they felt like they had finally got their mummy back. My husband was completely unsupportive and our marriage ended. I have been on my own ever since.

As well as becoming a disabled divorcee, my standard of living has drastically declined. Whereas I was once comfortable, I now worry about putting food on the table. I live in a tiny flat and have no disposable income. The loneliness of it all is a lot to cope with on top of my physical symptoms.

When I asked Barclays for help it offered me nothing. And when I later wrote to the Financial Ombudsman in the hope of a resolution, it never investigated my case. I know five years have passed, but if you see a glimmer of hope I’d be grateful for your help. –CC, Gloucestershire

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After the isolation of dealing with this on your own for so long, daring to dream of being reunited with your life savings once more felt dangerous. Yet I did feel there was hope and, realising this was very much your final shot, I promised to investigate.

My dear reader, I can see you’ve really been through the ringer. You were unlucky enough to stumble upon these ruthless fraudsters just at the moment when you were at your most vulnerable, and also happened to have £1m sitting in your bank account.

At the time, you were dealing with a discombobulating house move, the breakdown of your marriage, which was completely devastating, and on top of all this you had the gruelling physical difficulties of Parkinson’s disease. It was little wonder you felt close to the edge when you discovered that a criminal had stolen all your money as well.

It strikes me you had no concept of how profoundly mind-altering this medicine, ropinirole, could be while you were under its influence. According to the NHS website it can cause binge eating, a rampant appetite in the bedroom and urges to gamble and shop uncontrollably. All of these are signs of something called “impulse

control disorder”, which your GP has confirmed you were suffering from at the time of the fraud. Of course, the heartless rogues behind the scam were only too happy to exploit your manic state in which you were ravenous for financial risk. In fact, they called you incessantly to egg you on, you said. You trusted them so much that you even confided in them about your Parkinson’s.

I wanted to know what Barclays had done to protect you as a customer, given the very out-of-character nature of these huge transactions that took place over the course of just a few months. You said the bank had never explicitly warned you that you could be being scammed. To my mind, someone transferring £829,000 out of their account over a few months ought to have been invited for a sit-down chat to interrogate the nature of the payments. I told Barclays that if what you were saying was true, you should be reimbursed in full for your losses. Barclays took many weeks to review your case, and your texts asking “any news?” were fading in frequency. I could tell your tiny flame of hope had gone out. I felt so sad for you.

Then finally, after five long years, Barclays made a decision. I phoned you and asked if you were sitting down because I had some news. You wailed in disbelief as I told you the words you never thought you’d hear: your £829,000 was coming back to you. I’m so happy that I am that person you had nearly given up hope of finding, because for you this result is truly life-changing. Instead of struggling to survive, you can now put in place high-quality care for yourself as your Parkinson’s progresses. As long as you don’t fall for any more scams or take any more ropinirole, you will never have to worry about money again.

A Barclays spokesman said: “As a result of a further review of this case, we recognise that this was a tragic case of a sophisticated investment scam. Due to the circumstances of this matter, we will be returning the funds lost in full to our customer.

“We urge customers to check whether an investment company is a genuine FCA-regulated financial firm before transferring any money and, if in doubt, to seek independent financial advice first. If the investment opportunity seems too good to be true, it undoubtedly is.”